No looking back for the farmer happy to be a lab rat

Laurie Don has no regrets about turning part of his farm into a giant open-air laboratory for the benefit of the local mineral sands processing plant.

The bonus, as he sees it, is that he is getting free a fertiliser that could have cost him a lot of money.

Over three years Mr Don has allowed TiWest, a joint venture between the giant United States firm Kerr McGee Chemical Corporation and Australian-based Ticor Resources, to pour about 55,000 litres of treated industrial waste over his land in the belief that it will make crops of lucerne grow better.

The trial is intended to underscore the value of a product that could soon be sold commercially to farmers under the brand-name TiFix.

''If I was to buy lime, gypsum and iron and mix it all up I would be looking at paying something like $300 a tonne, and that is just out of the question," he said.");document.write("

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''Whereas this is an industrial waste which they have to backload back to their mine and bury. And to me that is a crying shame."

Mr Don, who runs a horse stud eight kilometres from the TiWest plant in Chittering, north of Perth, said he asked to be part of the trial.

''I heard about this material and when I asked for some they said they weren't allow to give it to me because of government regulations. So they got it over here through the trial. I don't pay for it and they are using various [application] rates

over about 36 little plots.

''They did a couple of patches three years ago and the results on the lucerne were colossal, but it wasn't so good on the pasture."

It is not the first time Mr Don has used industrial waste as fertiliser, having previously tried another product, Ironman Gypsum.

That is acid effluent waste from the Iluka Resources mineral sands processing plant. It is neutralised and granulated and sold as a commercial fertiliser for $70 a tonne throughout Western Australia, according to a company spokesman.

Peter Grigg, the general manager of northern operations for TiWest, said that while the TiFix product had small traces of heavy metals such as lead, mercury and cadmium, it was essentially a mixture of gypsum and lime.

He said the idea of testing the by-product on farmland had sprung from laboratory experiments.

''We have taken the attitude that we want this to be squeaky clean. We want to make sure that it is good for all concerned, and so far that is the way it is looking."

Mr Grigg said the waste would normally be stored in costly clay-lined dams, so the commercial benefits of selling it to farmers would be a bonus to the company.

''Potentially there is 40,000 tonnes a year [available] ... but we are not driven or in a hurry [to finish the experiment]."

The product trials, which have been approved by the West Australian Department of Environmental Protection, could take up to seven years, he said.